


...but you still have your car

by roswyrm



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Bad Ending, Canonical Character Death, Doom, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I'm so sorry, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:10:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19232536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roswyrm/pseuds/roswyrm
Summary: “Gin and tonic,” Sam says, and their voice breaks around the syllables in a way that isn’t age.“We don’t serve kids,” the bartender snaps, not unkind but firm.“I’m eighteen.” And theyaren’t,but there must be something in their voice that makes the bartender look up at them. “Gin and tonic. Please.”





	...but you still have your car

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DrowningInStarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/gifts).



> see i was sorry about this and then the rqdbfc started on about a burlesque au and no i have no sympaty. fuck you in particular, rowan. Working Title: _god im so sad about motw what the FUCK, **BENJAMIN**_

Sam can drive. There’s a pit sunk deep in their stomach like death and doom are on the horizon, but Sam still has their car. So they get in, and they get to driving, as far away from Sussex as they can manage before breaking down into tears. Betty said it was okay to cry, but she always said it looking at Cleo. 

Cleo never cried.

Sam doesn’t cry, not after the first night, curled up in the backseat, the faintest wisps of out-of-fashion perfume and gunmetal burning their nose like Cleo’s blood burned their heart. Burned it down to nothing but scraps. Sam drives, and Sam doesn’t cry, because what would Cleo think of them?

“Gin and tonic,” Sam says, and their voice breaks around the syllables in a way that isn’t age. 

“We don’t serve kids,” the bartender snaps, not unkind but firm.

“I’m eighteen.” And they _aren’t,_ but there must be something in their voice that makes the bartender look up at them. “Gin and tonic. Please.” They hop up onto a barstool and the bartender slides them a gin and tonic. 

_(“I’ll have a spirit!”)_

(It wasn’t funny the first time Betty said it, and it wasn’t funny the– the last. The last time she said it.)

Sam meets Doc a few towns over, with her too-big glasses and deadpan snark that might make Sam laugh if they felt like doing anything but screaming. She’s bickering over a microscope in the university lab room with a track scholarship student named Matt. “It’s plant matter,” Doc snaps, “and you’d know that if you ever paid attention in my class! I’m telling you, whatever the hell is going on here, it’s a lot bigger than your track tournament.” The degree hanging on the wall behind her reads _Ashley Stine, Ph.D_ and Sam can already tell she’s a Flake. She sees the connections no one else does, and she’s more than ready to believe in something like a Moss Man.

Sam lets the door slam shut behind them, and the other two both jump. Amateurs. Always lock doors behind you if you’re going to make a big discovery or try and figure out something that people don’t want you figuring out. Cleo taught them that. “The doc’s right,” they say. And then, “Can I trust you two with a secret?”

The new group doesn’t last a week. Matt was gearing up to be a Spell-Slinger, and he could have been a damn good one, but he just gets unlucky. The frost ripped across the Moss Man’s chest, and it roared. And it turned away from Sam, stuck up to their waist in pond scum, to go hold tight to Matt and Doc. And Doc shot it, kept shooting it, ran out of ammo and tried the brass knuckles she had hidden under her neat blazer, but the Moss Man froze them both alive. Sam was okay, though. That same feeling of _doom_ settled in their stomach, and they didn’t cry. What would Cleo think?

Sam still has their car, so they drive.

Sam loses count of the teams they take on, which monster-hunters of the week they’ve lost, and Sam drives.

Renée is Divine, filled with holy light that abruptly flickers out when a ghost _(god, Betty, with her heart-shaped 60’s sunglasses that Sam always made fun of)_ jerks away her air and gives a cawing laugh as Renée clutches at her throat and sinks to the ground, suffocating.

Danny is Spooky, just a little girl, and she makes it longer than the others, longer even than Cleo, _(god, Cleo, with her casual intimidation that Sam wished they could possess)_ sitting shotgun even though she’s only eight, singing along to the radio off-key and hugging her stuffed bunny tight to her chest. Sam hugs her, just once, turning her away from the bloodied corpse of yet another ex-partner and burying their face in her hair because _Danny’s safe, she made it, Sam didn’t lose her, Sam didn’t get this poor kid killed,_ and when they pull back, her eyes are blank. The scorpion-thing stabbed her between Sam’s clinging arms. Bad luck that Sam held her in place and bad luck that the scorpion had just enough life left in it and bad luck that Danny didn’t Know it was coming.

Sam drives. The radio comes on, crackling, to the kid’s favourite song, and Sam breaks it with Doc’s salvaged brass knuckles, and their hand is bruised so badly that they have to wrap it the way Betty taught him. _“Like this, see? I used to do this for… I-I used to do this all the time.”_

Sam doesn’t cry. What would Cleo think?

Shawna was an Initiate. Slammed into a brick wall so hard her head cracked open like an egg.

Orion was Chosen. His destiny called for slaughter or self-sacrifice, and he was too soft to follow through with the former.

Isolde, Lucy, Angel, Vernon, Pauly.  
Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.  
Just bad luck, really.

Sam doesn’t cry.

They don’t even realise that the years are passing because once you’ve seen that much bloodshed and caused so many deaths (that pit in their stomach never goes away, not once, something like _doomed_ echoing in every move they make, and they know it’s their own luck running out that gets every single person they start to care about killed) everything kind of blurs together in a gory red wash. “Sam?” Tatiana asks, and Sam looks up from the photo-booth pictures of a dumb little kid with a dark-skinned woman looking exasperated and a smudge of _glitch_ beside them. Tatiana (she’s Crooked, but soft and sweet) smiles awkwardly. “You coming? Me an’ Brady are getting drinks.” She’ll be dead by Saturday.

Sam tucked the photos back into their wallet. They still don’t have their license, but no one ever seems to ask for one, these days. “I don’t drink and drive,” they say, instead of _“Yeah, sure, liquid lunch!”_ People don’t check them at the door anymore, and that was half the fun.

Tatiana shrugs, takes Brady’s arm (he’s a Professional, and if he doesn’t die, he’ll just go back to his organisation) and walks into the bar.

Sam slumps into their seat.

They’re nineteen.

They keep going because there are monsters to slay and people to save and they slowly but surely patch up their (dad’s) car until it’s not as recognisable, trade in their (dad’s) hunting rifle for a newer one that isn’t too big to use. They’re nineteen. Not _‘basically eighteen’_ and not _‘a grownup, honest’_ and not _‘old enough to be in here, I swear.’_ Sam is nineteen years old, and if they’d gone the way of Betty and Cleo and Doc and Matt and all the others, maybe it would have been a tragedy. Maybe they wouldn’t feel so defeated.

Sam’s nineteen. Sam doesn’t cry.

What would Cleo think?

It’s not like she’s there to ask.

Sam drives off into the sunset, because they still have a car, and the heavy feeling of _doomed_ that settles uncomfortably in the pit of their gut is familiar.

(The sunset doesn’t seem as appealing as it did, five years ago.)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr @roswyrm come yell at me into writing something happy


End file.
